Well, about the Kindle 2, I very much agree with your assessment of it being a closed environment that Amazon set up which may indeed hurt it’s position in the long term. Wouldn’t it be cool, though, if some of the large text book publishers partnered with Amazon and licensed their content to school districts willing to go digital? That’s kinda what I was hinting at when I mentioned my point about publishing issues… I imagine a system where schools would pay for a license key which would provide access to specific, district adopted content –and Amazon (or a company like it) could simply act as the distributor/middle man. I mean, if I were a big text book publisher, I’d be all over this — it would cut down on physical publishing costs for the publishing houses, which would improve their own bottom line. Ultimately, it would serve as “another” distribution method and open other agreements down the line.

Also, there are ways to get free (public domain classics) onto the Kindle… In other words, Amazon COULD, when the time was right, OPEN their closed environment. The fact that their pipeline is a closed system (with the potential to open it and really do what it wants to) may be attractive to text book publishers worried about a “wild west” digital rights mentality with no sheriff in town… What do you think?

Anyway, so great to meet you in cyberspace.

Buzz Garwood

I have been refered to you by Mathew Needleman on Classroom 2.0.

I am involved in a European Union funded education project looking at how to use digital comics in schools http://www.educomics.org

I am looking for websites and forums that focus on the use of digital comics in education, any suggestions would be very welcome.

I have a good list of websites that have comic tools, this is mainly about using the comics within the school.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Joel